Promotion to subject

That role which is most likely to be relevant to the success of an activity is generally associated with the syntactic relation A (transitive subject) in a transitive clause. For record, this is the person doing the recording. If a value adverb, such as well, is included, as in (85), it implies that the activity proceeded well owing to the efforts of John McDonald (the recording engineer) in A slot:

(85)   John McDonald recorded the Halle´ Orchestra well (with the Beyer microphone) (in studio B)

But the success of a recording venture might be attributable to the qualities of the orchestra involved, or of the microphone used, or to the acoustic properties of the recording studio. To indicate these, any of the three non-A NPs could be promoted to the A slot (displacing the original A, which cannot be included in the three sentences below). If a promoted NP was marked by a preposition, this is dropped.

(86) The Halle´ orchestra recorded well (with the Beyer microphone) (in studio B)

(87) The Beyer microphone recorded (the Halle´ Orchestra) well (in studio B)

(88) Studio B recorded (the Halle´ Orchestra) well (with the Beyer microphone)

Sentences (86)–(88) are still transitive. There can still be an O NP, the Halle´ Orchestra, in (87)–(88); in (86) the Halle´ Orchestra is in A slot, but is still understood to be the object of record.

There is a crucial semantic and syntactic difference between (86), a transitive clause with the Halle´ Orchestra in A slot, and the passive of (85), which is intransitive and has the Halle´ Orchestra in S relation:

(89)   The Halle´ Orchestra was recorded well (by John McDonald) (with the Beyer microphone) (in Studio B)

In (86) the excellence of the recording venture is attributed to the qualities of the orchestra. In (89) (as in (85)) it is due to the skill of the underlying agent (and is so perceived even if the agentive phrase by John McDonald is omitted from (89)).

Non-A NPs can be promoted to A slot in the presence of a limited set of adverbs (well, nicely, slowly, easily and just a few more) or the negative marker, or a modal, or a combination of these. We can say Studio C didn’t record the Halle´ Orchestra very well, but plain *Studio C recorded the Halle´ Orchestra is not acceptable.